I don’t really have anything super formal or exciting to talk about today, but it’s still something.

Eating habits. Something that people tend to overlook, when it is something that we really should be paying attention to! Eating habits can tell us a lot about what is going on inside the body, physical and mental.

Here are a couple bad eating habits that I have, but am trying to turn around:

-Eating without chewing much.

-Eating and being occupied with other things.

-Snacking on something, and as I chew one piece, I’m already holding the next one in my hand.

Those are the big three I have noticed personally. Do you guys do any of those? Let me explain why they are my bad habits.

I was at my doctor’s office a little while back, and we were discussing stomach health (because it has a lot to do with my issues) and he mentioned how at a seminar, they said that many digestion problems in this nation are due to not chewing our food nearly enough times as we need to! He said in order for it to really be good to go for our stomach, we need to chew a bite of food at LEAST 20 times! Solution to this habit? Pay attention to your food and count to 20 in your head as you chew. If you keep doing this every time you eat, you can eventually turn around that habit. It may be time-consuming, but if it benefits my health I’m all for it!

This one is a killer because it makes us get in the mindset that eating ISN’T important and that we just use it for pleasure or to pass some time. It’s rather dangerous because we forget that eating is what supplies our body with vitamins and other nutrients, it gives us energy and all that important stuff. Solution to this habit? When you eat a snack or meal make sure to sit at a table where you are supposed to eat, and not on the couch, bed, etc. also, make sure that you aren’t in front of the TV, have your phone nearby, or anything else that could really distract your from eating. And simply pay attention to your food! I struggle with this one because I find that just eating and being quiet is boring, but I think we could use a little more self-discipline and learn that not every moment has to be exciting or entertaining.

This one is a big big contributor to overeating. This is when eating becomes muscle memory and all you’re doing is shovelling food in your mouth. Solution to this habit? Make sure you aren’t falling into the traps of the previous two habits is the first thing you should do. Then, when you do snack or eat, make sure that you are focusing on what is in your mouth and not what is on your plate. If you have anything in your hand, put it down. It’s a tougher habit to break because like I said, it is muscle memory, but you can break it!

And there you have it! Those are my bad habits and how I am trying to fix them. Man, it is hard. But I know it will benefit me in the end! Do you have any eating habits? Good or bad. Let me know in the comments below. If you enjoyed this post, say so! I have no clue what people like to read on this blog so I just write whatever.

Have a lovely day!

-Ten

{Disclaimer: I am no doctor. This is about my opinion and personal finding on eating habits. If you think you have a real problem with eating habits, please go consult an actual doctor.}

I apologize for my absence. I realize no one really checks this blog, but I feel like apologizing anyway.

It’s been a long year. 2015 didn’t exactly treat me nicely. I had to go through a lot, but it’s okay because I’ve made it out alive. I ended up discovering a lot and learning little things that I wouldn’t have learned if I wasn’t sick the way I was. This being said I’m always going to be at least a bit sick on the inside, and I will never be 100%. However, I’m okay with that because I already feel crazy good. It’s awesome how the simple things can change how you feel.

For those who didn’t exactly know what problems I had, here they are:

-Hashimoto’s thyroiditis which essentially was hypothyroidism (My body decided to attack my thyroid and that made it slow. Which made everything else slow.)

-Celiac… Oh, dear Celiac. (I’m allergic to gluten!!)

-Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (Also known as PCOS)

-Adrenal Fatigue (Yay, another thing that is slow.)

Anyway, that’s that. If you have any questions feel free to ask away 🙂

I was rather blessed to have common problems with simple solutions! 😀 I thank the Lord for that.

So that whole fiasco was the reason for my absence, but I intend to write a lot in 2016, simply because I love writing. It’s fun! And I can talk to multiple people all over the world at different times WITHOUT having to repeat myself or talk on the phone…. That is pretty cool to me.

Lately, because I’ve been feeling better, I have gotten back into the habit of baking. But this time around, it’s gluten free. It’s a challenge for sure, but it’s fun! (And expensive…) Tuesday I made gluten free pie crust and had chicken pot pie, which is a favorite meal of mine that I couldn’t have since being diagnosed with celiac in July. I will probably end up posting my recipes after I work out the kinks and such. Yesterday I made what I would describe as “death”. Pumpkin cake with maple pecan frosting. Need I say more? I talked about it on my personal facebook page and now all my friends and family want the recipe! (By all I mean 3 people. Close enough.) I haven’t even perfected it yet. So I think I will post the imperfect recipe here and let everyone have fun with it. But not today. Too much work. 😉

I will stop rambling and get to the point of this post.

1) To let you know that I will be posting weekly or so. I will try to get an interesting post out every week but, of course, I’m not making promises!

2) Do you want recipe posts? I am interested in doing them, because now that I’m gluten-free I want people to be able to make “normal” food. I know how rough it is to eat less than exciting food because you’re on a strict allergy related diet.

3) Should I post craft/decor/DIY related posts? I don’t really know what to post. For a while, it might be seasonal rambling…. XD

Anyway thanks for reading this post! Expect more interesting stuff to come soon. Maybe about cookie decorating, my obsession with the Pantone color of 2015, or anything else I can think of.

Hey everyone! Today is Monday…. No. Thanks. The wind chill today was -22. Long story short I didn’t go to school. Even though schools were still opened. These people are insane.

Anyway, because I didn’t go, I had a some extra time. And I did something dangerous. I came up with something I like to call puppy chow 2.0. In my family we always called it monkey munch for whatever reason, but it’s more popularly known as puppy chow so that’s what I’ll call it here. This is my first recipe on my blog, how exciting! I know my blog won’t be known for food, but that doesn’t mean I won’t share my favorite recipes, or my random creations once in a while.

On to the recipe! This lovely creation in my opinion is WAY better than original puppy chow, hence why I named it puppy chow 2.0. So here’s the recipe:

¾ cup of a more plain type cereal (I used Corn Chex today, but sometimes I make this with things like frosted flakes, and I’ve even seen it done with peanut butter cereal, it all depends on preference and what you have in your house!)

⅓ bag of milk chocolate chips (Roughly that is, in this recipe, exact measures aren’t required! 😉 I still advise trying your best to stick to the recipe)

1 spoonful of Nutella

1 spoonful of peanut butter (or more if you’re crazy about peanut butter)

¼ cup of mini marshmallows

And some powdered sugar if you want to coat the puppy chow in it like you would normally.

Here’s how I did it.

I start by dumping all of the chocolate chips in a bowl, and microwaving them. I do this in 25-30 second intervals, stirring in between each time. (My chocolate chips were frozen, so it took a little more time than it would traditionally, I had to do about 90 seconds altogether.) You have to be very careful not to overcook your chocolate chips, something I learned from watching my mother… And even if you’re convinced they need another 30 seconds after doing it two or three times, don’t do it right away. Remember that there’s usually enough heat that they will keep melting after you take them out of the microwave so make sure to stir them a lot and you can avoid potentially overcooking your chocolate chips! 😀

Next, once your chocolate chips are nice and smoothly melted, grab your average teaspoon out of the drawer and dive into that jar of nutella! Just make sure it makes it into the bowl, and not your mouth…. Well. Maybe some in your mouth. Then, wipe off the spoon (if you are picky about it and don’t want Nutella in your peanut butter jar) and get a nice big spoon of peanut butter, and add that to the bowl too. However, you can add more if you’re simply in love with peanut butter. (I do like peanut butter, but I find it can be overwhelming and takes over the flavor in a dessert too much sometimes, and I found that one spoon for me is just enough.) Stir those into the chocolate quickly so your chocolate doesn’t harden, and make sure it’s smooth and well combined.

Now it gets tricky! Marshmallows are a difficult food to work with sometimes. What I did was add about half the marshmallows and mix them in, and put the bowl in the microwave, for exactly 11 seconds. I don’t know why, but I discovered this seems to be the magic number for marshmallows in my microwave. Your’s could be different though, so do as works best for you. As soon as I took the bowl out, I gently mixed them in, enough to make the texture go from smooth and creamy, to a little bit stickier and thick, and it’s easy to see when they’re mixed in perfectly.

You’re getting close to the end! Soon all of this will be in your mouth! Next add the cereal. Mix it in until you’ve found it’s coated enough for your liking. Now grab the rest of those marshmallows, and dump them in the bowl and mix them in. I found that I wanted them a little more mixed in than they will be at a normal state, so back in the microwave that bowl went. 8 seconds was perfect for me, but again, it may and most likely will vary. Here’s the last step. Powdered sugar. Grab some and put in as much as you like and mix it in. Then you’re done!

This is what it should look like when you’re done (if you didn’t use a ton of powdered sugar that is.) Ah! Heaven!

Now you have created the most dangerous food you can imagine. This my friends is solid gold. I made this for myself and ate it all. Then again, if you’re somehow self-controlled enough, this could make a snack for a couple days, or you could share it with your family. (Which personally I don’t know who would want to do that, but hey. You do you.) Also, you could double, triple, or quadruple this if you need to. Things like this are very flexible. Let me know if you come up with puppy chow 3.0, or simply find a small way to spice 2.0 up.

And I am very sorry for the lack of pictures, I actually only thought about making a post for this after the fact of making it! But I did my best to get you a few 🙂

Hope you enjoy eating this, and licking the bowl. And spoon. And spatula. And your fingers.

-Ten

P.S. I’m sorry the featured image to this post is blurry… I don’t understand why since it looks fine for me everywhere else! So here it is without the blurriness.

Usually I do a lot of preparation for the new year, in December. Normally, I clear out the camera roll on my phone, clean out my bedroom, and make lots of goals to achieve. Not this year. Mainly because I’ve been exhausted and too much so to be as organized as I like to be. I’m going to do my best to be organized this year though.

However, before I get going on my goals for 2015, I would like to review 2014 a little bit. The featured picture for this post is a collage, one picture for each season. So let me explain the photos and share a little more about that season.

Winter: It’s cold, everything seems dead, and I’m stuck indoors. I hate winter. But, I can’t say that good things didn’t come out of it last year. In January, my friend and I (Look up her blog, hopelesscanister.wordpress.com) came up with an idea for a book, and we’re currently taking it seriously and developing the structure of it all. I can’t wait to begin actually writing it. Not much else happened in the winter, at least not that I remember. The photo for winter, I actually took a few weeks ago in December. But I didn’t have any remaining photos from that winter on my laptop, so I used the picture of my mom’s lovely vintage camera, with Christmas lights around it. ❤

Spring… I adore spring. The spring photo is of a cake I made for my sister’s birthday. I love rainbow things, and things with lots of color. (I’ll make a tutorial on how to do a cake like that, and supply a recipe, sometime in the coming months.) Spring was great for me. I got a new phone (a used Iphone 4 which I was incredibly grateful and excited to get) as an early birthday gift, I started growing vegetable plants, and I was playing soccer on a great team.

Summer: Parts of summer were great, some weren’t…. The photo in the collage is my favorite photo from the summer, and my favorite part of the summer. I was in Colorado on a trip with my youth group, for an amazing leadership/evangelistic training course. It was a week-long, but my group went early so we could go camping and sightseeing. It was phenomenal. That was in mid-July. However, in June, I sprained my ankle from soccer, and also did something to my knee. It was terrible. I couldn’t walk properly for about 6 weeks. In August, my grandparents and some friends came to visit us so that was a lot of fun. However, August is also the time when the fatigue effect of my hashimoto’s thyroiditis started to kick in, but I didn’t really notice it too much then.

Fall: Fall was…. interesting. School started up, not too much happened. However, in November I was officially diagnosed with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. Since then I’ve been sick a lot as well, and completely drained. Hopefully I’ll be back on my feet soon. The picture was just a simple shot I took of a tree in my neighborhood.

So there’s my recap of 2014! Kinda long, I know, but I was hoping to give you guys an interesting post to read. But it’s not over! Now we get on to my favorite part. Goals and resolutions for 2015. Below is a photo of my goals for 2015 written out on paper. There are different categories because those are the markers for my planner that I am still in the process of making. I made sure my goals for the year were useful, simple, achievable, and that they stayed true to me and what I want to accomplish! One of the goals you see, is to complete the 365 photos project. I so want to do it. I will. I’m gonna do a weekly recap of my photos for you guys to see. The color I’m doing for January is gray. I’m excited.

(The social goal is kind of a joke, because yes I do talk to people enough to be socially stable. I just didn’t know what else to put there so I thought I’d put something a bit humorous! 😀

Also, I would like to say this: cheers to being flexible in 2015. Wednesday night, 10 seconds before it was officially 2015, I dropped into the splits, and stayed there until it was 2015! Just for fun. Because, why not? And, my crazy resolution for this year, is to eat pie while in the splits. I can hold the splits for some time, but I do not have the balance and strength to stay there long. Besides, it will be pretty fun to eat pie while doing the splits. Maybe I will try to do that while I’m in Colorado this year! That would be even better.

So tell me, what are your goals and resolutions? How do you plan to achieve them? I hope you all have a great year, full of lovely things you enjoy, and things that make you stronger.

Peace out!

-Ten

P.S. Right now I’m currently on a trip… When I’m home I’ll make sure to blog about it, and I will definitely take lots of pictures! 😀

Hello again everyone! How are you on this lovely Saturday? Has all the Christmas chaos died down or are you still running around to a thousand family parties? I hope you’re all doing well.

I decided that after last night, and how well my first post did, that I wanted to post again this morning. I can’t stop writing! I woke up and immediately grabbed my laptop. Writing is certainly addictive.

Anyway, I thought I would write about my header and what the book is and such. So one morning I was in school, and I was in study hall reading a Nancy Drew book. (I love those books!) I was sitting at the table and my friends were roleplaying, and had all their dice laid out on the table, and I saw some cream-colored dice (which you see in the picture now!), and took them from my friend. He wasn’t happy about it at first, but I shushed him and told him it was for a picture. (When I see a perfect photo opportunity I run/grab/whatever I have to do to take the shot, immediately.) Then I grabbed my bag and placed it behind the book, because I knew it would make for a good backdrop.

Then came the process of getting the proper angle….. But I did it. I am very proud of that photo. I’m a beginner at photography, but that doesn’t mean I can’t take some great pics!

Speaking of photography, for 2015 I am doing a 365 days of photos challenge. I will do it according to month, so each month has a color theme. I made an instagram for it, but it’s private. I’m debating on whether or not I will also post the photos on here, with an explanation each day. I’ll think about it and let you guys know. The color for January is light blue… I don’t even have enough light blue in my house to last a month of photos! I might have to find a different color. Any suggestions on what color I should do for January? I’m thinking maybe white. I’ve got enough paper, right? 😉

Also, I’d like to give a quick apology for the short posts, it will take me a bit to get comfortable with blogging and writing lengthy posts, but at least I’m not writing overly long watered down posts.

Last thing, THANK YOU SO MUCH for all the positive feedback, views, and everything. It means a lot. If you enjoy my posts, give me a like, leave a comment, and tell your friends! And the question of the day is, do you like photography?

My name is Ten, and I am here to blog about my favorite things, and all the adventures I have while pursuing my dreams. Namely, a few of my favorite things are writing (hence another reason I started this blog), baking, gardening, and organizing (and there’s a lot more that I haven’t named!) . Before you go “Oh, well that’s what everyone blogs about…” and click away, hear me out. I have a twist! I’m still in school, and I have hashimoto’s thyroiditis (if you don’t know what hashimoto’s thyroiditis is, fear not, I’ll write a post about it later). Those two things make life a bit more difficult, and possibly it will make my blog more unique and interesting. We’ll see. Regardless, I hope you enjoy my posts as much as I will enjoy writing them! I am brand new to blogging, and I hope I can get a hang of it quickly. Pointers from experienced bloggers would be much appreciated! 😀

Now, to touch on my names and where they came from. First I’ll start off with the meaning behind aquaticsunflower. In all honesty, it started off as a name I randomly generated in my head for a new internet alias, then I realized it actually meant a bit more than being a silly and very random name. I love water. Swimming especially. Also, I like walking through creeks and splashing in puddles. Sure its childish, but who says there isn’t a time for being childish? There always is at some point. And sunflower, merely because it’s one of my favorite flowers. I chose it for the blog because I did say I was blogging about my favorite things right? And since water and sunflowers are some of my favorite things, it’s only appropriate. Besides, how cool would an aquatic sunflower be?! I would pay to see one.

Now for the name Ten, and why I choose to call myself that. Once upon a time….. (aka roughly a year and a half ago) I started playing Minecraft. (That’s right ladies and gentlemen, I’m a full-out geek.) When I started off, I didn’t have my own account. I used my friend’s account. Long story short, when I logged onto a Minecraft server, everyone called me Ten, seeing that it was the shortest nickname that fit my username. Even though I have my own account now, I still like to have people call me Ten. It’s just become that one nickname I’ll never give up! Another reason I decided to stick with the name is because like I said, I am a full-out geek….. And I love love love Doctor Who. Tenth doctor for the win, am I right?! So I said why not? And now all my internet friends call me Ten. (If one of my friends is reading this…. Hello!!! :D)

I hope you stick around to read my blog posts! The goal is to post once a week, on Fridays. Let’s see if I can keep with it! Last thing- do you have a nickname that you and everyone you’re around has adapted to? If so, what is it?